‘What is Socialism?’ (London – 23-3-17 – 7pm)
- This topic has 10 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Discussion panel organised by the Platypus Affiliated Society with Adam Buick (SPGB) and others.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/what-socialism-london-7pm
Great! Though the merits of looking back at the Second International will be an obscure leftist preoccupation not a SPGB one.
I looked up the description used on our events calendar on the platypus website and came across thishttps://platypus1917.org/2016/05/31/socialism-international-social-democracy-platypus-2016-convention/and thishttps://archive.org/details/WhatIsInternationalSocialDemocracyOpeningPlenaryPASConv2016
The presentations and discussion at that panel meeting they held on the same subject in Chicago last year was dire, with the ghost of Lenin ever present:https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tz2gERLo9S4J:https://platypus1917.org/2016/07/1With Jack Conrad of the Weekly Worker (originally “The Leninist”) and now as the tba Mark Osborn of the "Alliance for Workers Liberty" as well, Lenin, with his distortion of what socialism means, is going to be hovering around at this meeting too. Fortunately, this time we'll be there.
This is tonight – Thursday, 23 March @ 7pm
Audience of about 30, mainly students. Six of us in the audience. Mark Osborn, the Trotskyist, cried off at the last moment, which meant that the panel was 2 to 1 against Bolshevism-Leninism. Report follows.
The main subject of the debate turned out, inevitably, to be the Bolshevik coup and Lenin's distorted definition of "socialism" as state capitalism. As the Party speaker I used quotes from Second International figures to show that prior to 1917 socialism had meant a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, and that it was Lenin who introduced a false distinction between "socialism" (a state capitalism where everyone becomes a hired employee of the state) and "communism" (what socialism originally meant).Everyone condemned the parties of the Second International though Jack Conrad ended up vigorously defending making the same mistake as them of having a "minimum programme" of democratic and social reforms to be achieved within capitalism as well as a "maximum programme" of socialism (however defined), which meant that they became the prisoners of their reformist supporters and voters and one reason why they went completely reformist. He also called for the setting up of "workers' militias" but conceded that weapon training for his party's members had not yet started.The other pannellist, Robin Halpin, argued that the revolution should begin by straigntaway abolishing private property and money and the link between work and consumption. He talked about the "ontology of labour" and said that capitalism was in "terminal decline" because it couldn't cope with the replacement of living labour by robots. He was against having anything to do with the State (in fact he came across as an anarchist) and a vociferous critic of the Bolsheviks for their "coup d'Etat" and suppression of the independence of the soviets. He was billed as "translator of workers by the Exit! group". Not been able to find out much about them but apparently they are something to do with, for or against, the ideas of the German philosopher Robert Kurz, if anyone knows about them.Discussion continued afterwards in a "wine bar" which some of our members were reluctant to enter but it turned out that it did serve lager too. It's still not clear to me what the Platypus Group, whose members here all seem to be students, stand for. One thing they do favour is debate, which is a good thing.
Here's a video of the debate although the sound quality is not great. Click on the links.https://www.facebook.com/groups/Platypus1917/permalink/10154945471960867/
Here's an audio recording of the debate.https://archive.org/details/WhatIsSocialismInternationalSocialDemocracyA transcript will also be available in due course.
gnome wrote:Here's an audio recording of the debate.https://archive.org/details/WhatIsSocialismInternationalSocialDemocracyA transcript will also be available in due course.An edited transcript of the debate can now be seen here:https://platypus1917.org/2017/06/05/socialism-international-social-democracy-2/
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.